USA TODAY International Edition
‘ IT’S JUST GUYS ON A BOAT’ — ONLY SMEARED IN WHALE GUTS
The cast of ‘ In the Heart of the Sea’ has some wet and wild tales to tell
WATFORD, There’s a ENGLAND price to be paid for being a young seaman in the maritime adventure In the Heart of the Sea. So British youngster Tom Holland quickly got used to being covered in whale guts and blubber.
It’s a cold November night at Warner Bros.’ Leavesden Studios when Holland is sticking his head inside a fake whale carcass. This particular scene in director Ron Howard’s period drama finds the crew of the whaling boat the Essex on a successful night after a capture, and Holland’s 19thcentury rookie sailor Thomas Nickerson is being put through his paces having to scrape out gunk as his colleagues fill barrels of whale oil.
“Best put this in your teeth, boy,” a crewmate tells Nickerson as he gives him a piece of whale bone. “It stinks worse than the devil’s ( butt) down there.”
Two years later, Holland, 19, recalls the night in question — where 20 minutes after the scene ended, he was still covered in slime — and it’s not a fond memory. “That was a rubbish day, man,” he says. “It was probably the coldest, wettest I’ve ever been.”
Animal byproducts were just the tip of the travails faced by the male cast of In the Heart of the
Sea, which chronicles the real- life 1820s seafaring tale that inspired Herman Melville’s Moby- Dick. Chris Hemsworth, Cillian Murphy and Benjamin Walker star as the crew that’s attacked by a 95- foot- long sperm whale and is ultimately left stranded for 90 days of extreme survival.
“It’s a very old- fashioned tale and a muscular movie, and they don’t make too many of those these days,” says Murphy, who plays second mate Matthew Joy. “It’s a stand- alone movie that’s not a franchise, no aliens — it’s just about guys on a boat.”
Howard describes the movie, based on Nathaniel Philbrick’s book, as “a story of transformation and a trial by fire. All the characters are being tested by nature and their own psyches.”
Things got messy in terms of blubber — while it does tend to get anywhere on a film set, it doesn’t get on the captain, says Walker, starring as George Pollard Jr., the ranking leader of the Essex. “Not unless you want to go overboard.”
Hemsworth’s worst day as first mate Owen Chase, however, came during one of the movie’s truly hairy storm scenes. Howard’s effects staffs created a floating set surrounded by 250- foot blue- screen walls, water cannons and wind machines that housed a ship with a hydraulic gimbal system that would violently throw the drenched actors around.
“You were just getting banged up and freezing and exhausted,” Hemsworth recalls. “And we weren’t eating much, either.”
The production later moved to the Canary Islands, where Howard filmed the scenes of the crew starving. The actors had a diet of 500 calories a day, and Hemsworth lost more than 30 pounds.
“I was the private person who sat on my own and cried over my food and drank my own tears,” Holland jokes. “A few people were the grumpy ones.”
He reveals that Hemsworth was a source of crankiness, and the Thor star doesn’t disagree.
“My wife could probably give you the details,” Hemsworth says, laughing. “It wasn’t pretty, I’ve got to say.” Howard figures In the Heart of
the Sea was the hardest movie he has ever directed, between the physical demands, filmmaking challenges and what the actors needed to deliver under constant duress. But he found himself impressed by the way his cast came together to get themselves through the hardest days.
“We were very highly strung. … But because we were doing it as a team, and all of us were in this thing together, it meant we could beat each other up in a way, and it gave us the motivation to keep going,” Holland says.
Adds Hemsworth: “There’s no swashbuckling and romance and ‘ Off we go to sea!’ ” The real whalers of the day led lives that were “dirty and dangerous and lifethreatening. The tight existence with one another does create a ‘ band of brothers’ attitude and a certain sense of humor and the love- hate relationships.
“You’ll die for one another, but you want to kill each other at times as well.”